Designing a TR-606 style hi-hat from scratch

Build your own as a DIY eurorack kit: Support the channel... ... through Patreon: ... by buying my other DIY kits: Simulation in CircuitJS: Video on passive filters: Join my Discord community: Synthesized, analog hi-hats are pretty fascinating. That’s because emulating any kind of cymbal using an analog circuit is tough, since the sound a real cymbal produces is not quite pure noise – but also not really harmonic. Still, a couple classic drum machines like the Roland TR-606 and TR-808 took their best shot at it, with quite strange sounding results that I personally really like. So I decided to follow suit and came up with this simple, but very versatile and crunchy sounding DIY hi-hat circuit. If you want to build along, here’s the bill of materials: RESISTORS 1M x1 470k x1 120k x1 100k x16 82k x2 68k x1 56k x1 51k x1 47k x3 39k x2 33k x2 22k x1 10k x2 680 x1 470 x1 100 x1 CAPACITORS 1u x1 470n x1 100n x6 10n x1 3n3 x2 2n2 x1 1n x3 POTENTIOMETERS (ALL LINEAR) 250k x1 100k x1 10k x1 1k x1 DIODES 1N4148 x4 TRANSISTORS BC548 (NPN) x4 BC558 (PNP) x2 CHIPS TL072 (dual op amp) x2 40106 (hex schmitt trigger inverter) x1 Chapters 00:00 Intro & Sound Demo 01:30 Hi-Hat Basics 03:21 Metallic Noise Gen 06:25 Bandpass Filter 13:55 Distortion/VCA 19:12 Envelope/Gate-To-Trigger 22:10 Highpass Filter 26:50 Open Hi-Hat 28:32 Tune Control 35:34 Outro